Husband and I have been eagerly awaiting the time when we will be able to leave our sons at home without parental supervision. The oldest just turned ten, but I’m thinking this rite of passage is still quite a way off. The other day, when he offered to watch his brothers for half an hour so Husband and I could go for a quick walk and I asked him what he would do with his brothers if we took him up on his offer, he said, “I’ll just lock the twins in their room and then no one else is really a problem.”
Clearly he doesn’t understand what “babysitting” means.
He’s a fairly responsible kid, but he’s not all that observant. If his attention is stolen by anything—a bird in the backyard that he wants to identify, an idea that he has to act on right this very minute, a really good book—then the entire rest of the world is left to its own devices. He becomes efficiently and completely immersed in his own world.
The thought of having some time away while this son watches his brothers is very tempting. We don’t get many date nights. And this kid is the one who once told my mother that he wished he could figure out how to clone Husband and me so that one set of us could watch him and his brothers while the other set got to go out on a date. He knows we’re starved for dates and time alone, and he’s sweet enough to care.
Still, I’m too smart to sign off on Temporary Head of Household just yet.
The problem isn’t really him, either. The problem is that all six of my children are BOYS. Husband had a brother. I’ve heard insane stories about what brothers do together, and this does not help my son’s case at all. My sister’s husband had a brother, and his stories are even worse than Husband’s. What their stories tell me (and what I know to be true already) is that the things boys do are impulsive and careless and, I hate to say—I really do—stupid. Every now and then Husband, my brother, or my brothers-in-law will provide me with a glimpse of the little boys who still live inside them.
Take the Fourth of July in 2011, for example. These fine grown men of my family—all of them fathers, mind you—decided that year that they would drop some cash on fireworks—but instead of setting the fireworks off at night, they would do it during the day, using a PVC pipe as a homemade bazooka. This ended almost as badly as you might imagine—a fire started in the field behind our home. Thankfully, my stepdad, at the time, was a volunteer firefighter, and he managed to get it under control before anybody else knew of their prank. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him move that fast before, and I’ve known him since I was twelve.
This is exactly what leads me to believe that it’s quite possible I will never be able to leave my sons home alone.
Recently I asked this question on social media: What age is old enough for children to stay home alone? I got a variety of answers. None of my friends had a definitive one, because it’s really up to the parents and the kids. I know this. I remember staying home alone when I was eight, my brother was nine, and my little sister was five—but I was an old woman trapped in a child’s body. Also, there was only one boy.
Here’s what I imagine would happen to my house if my sons stayed home alone for any amount of time:
1. Someone would surely get hurt.
This is because someone would most likely decide to do something ridiculous, like climb to the top of the deck covering, which isn’t as high as the roof, and jump off with a trash bag they still think can make them fly; that someone might break his leg. Or someone would decide it might be fun to sword fight with butcher knives, since Mama and Daddy have always forbidden it and they’re the worst parents ever and only want kids to not have any fun; this someone might have his nose lobbed off. Or someone else would try to walk on the roof with their roller blades strapped to their feet because the slope of it makes the perfect ramp. That someone might break every bone in his body.
Boys think they’re invincible. Especially when they’re alone with no parent to talk any sense into them.
2. All the food would vanish.
When my sons are home, the most frequent phrase I repeat, besides, “You’ve already asked that question and I’ve already answered it,” is, “Get out of the refrigerator.” I suspect that as soon as Husband and I were to walk out of sight or drive away (one day), our boys would immediately open up the fridge and binge on the rest of whatever’s there.
We’d likely either come home to a completely empty refrigerator or a bunch of boys in prone positions complaining their stomachs hurt because they ate ten pounds of bananas on a dare or they found my hidden chocolate reserves or they drank a whole gallon of milk to see who could drink it the fastest without puking out their insides—which is what the boys in my church youth group used to do for fun on the weekends. They always did it at night, when their milk vomit practically glowed in the dark. Night or day, it was still stupid.
You’ll notice a recurring theme here.
3. They’d fight and one would threaten to run away—and actually accomplish it.
Since this happens often when Husband and I are home, I imagine that the same would happen if we were away for any length of time. The missing variable is Parent, but if there’s a Substitute Parent, I foresee it still being a problem.
And my sons don’t just threaten to run away: they do.
We live in a relatively safe neighborhood, and they have friends living all around it, so when they say they’ll run away, they’ll usually just go hang out at a friend’s house up at the top of the cul-de-sac. They’re easy enough to find; I let them have their momentary victory while observing their imagined escape.
But when a brother is in charge, he would probably not be quite so inclined to watch and “find” his missing brother, since the impetus to running away was the fight they just had. Brother In Charge despises Brother Who Ran.
The problem is not so neatly resolved.
4. Something terrible would befall the house.
Everywhere my sons go in my house, they leave their marks behind. There are fingerprints on windows and holes in the walls and ski marks on the carpet (don’t ask). One of them the other day “accidentally” slammed the back door too hard, and a picture frame fell off the wall and shattered at his feet. He was shocked to know that he had such power.
Boys, as any parent knows, don’t think about the fact that if they climb onto a bookshelf full of books, it might actually fall over (if it’s not bolted to the wall—and sometimes even then). If they try to stack two chairs on top of each other, even when the makeshift “stool” is propped against a wall, they will still fall and, for their efforts, punch a new hole in the wall. If they try to do a pull-up on the open cabinet, that cabinet will rip from its hinges.
They don’t think about what they’re doing until there’s a gaping hollow in the door where they thought it would be funny to kick it closed. They don’t think about what they’re doing until there’s a shower curtain bent in two, because they wanted to see if it could actually support their weight. They don’t think about what they’re doing until the mirror is shattered in front of them because they thought it would be funny to throw a metal car at it.
Without parents at home, all my house’s protection vanishes.
If my sons were left alone, the chance that they would do something stupid and irresponsible increases, by default, by about one thousand percent.
Everybody knows that boys need the loving hand of a wise parent to keep them from doing something reckless. They only have the capacity to consider how cool the idea would be. You want to see what it would be like to jump from the roof to the trampoline? I’m game. You want to ride a skateboard down the stairs? Yep. Me too. You want to set off firecrackers from a PVC pipe? Let’s do it.
What could possibly go wrong?
Every now and then, my ten-year-old will try again. He’ll tell us to go ahead and go out on a date. He’ll take care of his brothers—for a price (ten dollars. He has a cheap going rate). We thank him for his kindness and consideration and politely decline for now.
And, possibly, forever (but I really hope not).
This is an excerpt from If These Walls Could Talk,the fifth book of humor essays in the Crash Test Parents series.
(Photo by Stephen Radford on Unsplash)
